Where does your money go with GOES? Fair question. Let's imagine we're going to find out as we travel to some of the villages together.
We're staying at a small hotel on the Atlantic coast near Kotu village. Turn left out of the hotel and a ten minute walk takes you to the centre of the village. There are a few shops, a market, several hotels and that's it! Back to the hotel, keep going to the crossroads and we'll pick a taxi to Bakau, the next village along the coast. It's a good 20 minute jog but it's a hot day ... Bakau is a much larger fishing village with a fish market, a craft market, several hotels, large shops and banks and a crocodile pool! We've helped one of the large families here with housing, education, and health care. We might as well drop in for a brew of attaya (green tea). The children are anxious to show us their school reports and parents smile proudly ... while we're nearby we'll pop along to the Capital city, Banjul, and visit the hospital. We need to drop off supplies you've donated - medicines, bandages, catheters and a ream of computer paper.
Where next? Another taxi ride to see one of the schools we help in a suburb of Serrekunda. We drive across Denton Bridge which carries us across Oyster Creek, a wonderful place for bird watching, and eventually turn off the blacktop road onto a series of sand tracks which lead us to Bundung, where the school is. Here we have contributed to the running costs, bought paint, supplied school gates - numerous items which you've contributed to. The children greet us and sing! We tell a story but refrain from song!
Back in the taxi - one of the yellow Mercedes which transport everything from people to goats and chickens and sheets of corrugated iron and ... everything that requires transporting, and mostly at the same time! Off again, back on the main road, past Abuko nature reserve on the right - must find time to visit one day - and Lamin Lodge Hotel on the left, on the bank of the mighty River Gambia, through Lamin village and turn left by the Taxi Centre on the road to Mandinari. We pass the Lower Basic School which has received a couple of dozen dictionaries given by you and carried free by Thomas Cook, plus a locally purchased sack of rice which the head teacher cooks so the children start the day with happy tummies - and stop outside the village clinic. We've had a long and happy relationship with this place. You'll remember helping to provide a clean water supply? See, there's the tap! This time we're bringing supplies for the medicine cupboard - stacks of paracetamol (for treatment of malaria) and rolls of bandages and a blood-pressure monitor.
We also pay a quick visit to the nursery school next to the clinic and check that funds we donated last trip have been put to good use. More attaya, then a quick round of visits to friends GOES has helped over the years - school fees paid for children and adults (mainly women who missed out on formal education, house repairs funded - if cement is added to the home-made building blocks it can resist water damage for a much longer time. So many people here want us to stay and chat and drink attaya and share a meal that we promise to return in a couple of days and stay longer.
Time to head back to the hotel in Kotu. Our driver, a long-time friend, mentions that his wife is preparing the evening meal and perhaps ... and the children would like to read to us? Of course - you don't mind, do you? You'll be welcome!
It's much later when we return to the hotel and sit by the pool watching the bats chasing mosquitoes across the night sky. Hope you enjoyed the journey? What's that? Mandinari seems very like Malinding in the story books? I couldn't possibly comment!
Saturday, 16 July 2016
Wednesday, 6 July 2016
Happy Koriteh!
Happy Koriteh to all my Muslim friends! I hope that's the right way to spell it! I believe that it's the celebration held at the end of the holy month of Ramadan, when there is a fast during daylight hours.
I have the greatest respect for those people who can observe it. Years ago, while I was staying with friends in the village I tried to follow the rule of no food or drink. I think I managed 3 days and then my friends ordered me to stop! I was, they said, exempt because of my age and they didn't want me to come to any harm. They said that they respected my attempt, but it wasn't a good idea to make myself ill. They provided food for me at lunch time and checked that I was drinking water regularly. I was more than happy to contribute to the feast at the end of the month!
May I take this chance to wish all my friends Good Health, Long Life, and Happiness.
Tom
I have the greatest respect for those people who can observe it. Years ago, while I was staying with friends in the village I tried to follow the rule of no food or drink. I think I managed 3 days and then my friends ordered me to stop! I was, they said, exempt because of my age and they didn't want me to come to any harm. They said that they respected my attempt, but it wasn't a good idea to make myself ill. They provided food for me at lunch time and checked that I was drinking water regularly. I was more than happy to contribute to the feast at the end of the month!
May I take this chance to wish all my friends Good Health, Long Life, and Happiness.
Tom
Monday, 4 July 2016
A preview page from one of the Malinding Village books
10)
Rachel's smiling at me. I've done something right. Or
something write? This book seems to be a book about a book. How not to write a
book? Do all writers agonise about what they're trying to say? Or do they just
sit down in their studies, smile at the beautiful bunch of flowers their fan
club sent, gaze out at their swimming pools, sip at a G & T and then write
perfect prose at the rate of a thousand words an hour? What is a G & T?
Must be something to drink if you sip at it. I've got this old laptop with
windows 98 and a battery that lasts all of half an hour if I don't play games.
Couple of hundred words a day? If I'm lucky. I once did five hundred but when I
read it I was so ashamed. I shouldn't have thoughts like that. Rachel** said I
should have kept them in, they were what this book is really about. But what if
one of my teachers - what if Miss Ellesmere - read it? Not that it's likely
that anyone will ever read it, but what if?
I wish I could keep this book in order, day-by-day, month-by-month. It
keeps leaping about from year to year then back to another year. That last bit
I wrote, about love and lovers. That was before I went to Uni.
I need a time line. BW and AW. Before wheels and after
wheels.
Sorry, I came to a grinding halt after that last thought.
Why do halts grind? Teeth grind. Mills
grind. How do halts grind? Halt! Who goes there? An old lame lady, sir. She
goes haltingly. I'm rabbiting on and on. Haltingly. It's a good job I've got
Rachel to talk to. I'd be talking to myself otherwise. Going quietly mad. Stark
raving starkers mad - like I did at school after those prefects assaulted me. I
wonder what happened to them? I could make something up about them, I'm a liar:
all writers are liars, well, the fictional ones are. I'm fictional, you know. I
am. So's Rachel and everybody else I know. We're all a pack of liars.
It's a bit like being a god, being a writer. What would I do
to the prefects?* You want to know? O.K. How's this: on their way home, after
the head teacher had sacked them, they rescued a kitten that had fallen into
the canal. They took turns to give it mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and wrapped
it up in my skirt (which they'd stolen as a souvenir). They took it to the
R.S.P.C.A. and it later found a good home with an old lady who lived a long,
long way from any dangerous water. Sadly, on their way home they were trampled
by a Mastodon which had escaped from a secret research centre and had to be
shot before it trampled the whole population of Weaverham. It took years to
breed another Mastodon from DNA and stem cells. I've just re-read that last bit
and realised what a nasty piece of work I am. Still, I'm not going to change
it. I hope it's not true …
Rachel's vanished. Maybe the last bit of the story was too
far-fetched even for her? Maybe. She's pretty far-fetched herself; maybe that's
why we get on so well together. If I had a real friend I'd like her to be like
Rach. I know she's not gone far because she never does. She once stayed away
for nearly a whole week. She thought I was becoming too dependent on her. But
she did come back. She doesn't find fault with me so much nowadays. She used to
be on my case all the time, day and night, but now we're best mates. She does
give me that look at times and I stop and think what I've said or what I've
done that wasn't quite right. Not appropriate kind of thing. I worry a bit
about my state of mind. I was unconscious for a couple of days after the
accident. I wonder if a few of my brain-cells opted out and didn't grow back. I
never had that many to start with. know
I'm not normal. Normal people have legs and walk and run and dance and swim. I
can swim, actually. Sort of doggy-paddle a lobster might do. My instructor
thought it was a variety of butterfly-stroke, so that's it then: the
halting-moth crawl. It works, gets me from one end of the pool to the other.
*Three racist senior students had attacked Jodie on her first day at school.
** Rachel is Jodie's imaginary friend.
Saturday, 2 July 2016
The first Malinding Village book
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Friday, 1 July 2016
Back on course!
Been rather busy for a while. Slow progress for a while, trying to get funds to a student teacher. We use a money transfer that used to be called Bayba. Normally it's been excellent, beneficiaries frequently receiving money on the day we send it. In all the years we've been supporting West Africans things have never gone wrong. Until a couple of weeks ago. We'd promised help to a young trainee teacher that we've known for a while. The system is that a trainee works full time in a school, hopefully with the support of the rest of the staff, and is paid a small wage. He or she saves as much as possible and attends Training College during the summer vacation. There are charges for books, uniform (a T-shirt) and travel expenses. Three weeks ago H reminded me, very politely, of our promise. I immediately paid the money into the Bayba account, they sent me the transfer code and I passed that on to H. All she had to do was turn up at the collection point, quote the code and show her ID card and walk away with the money. Not so this time: code not recognised, call again tomorrow. H did this three times without success then WhatsApped me. I checked: code correct - try again. I emailed her copies of my documents, H tried again. Code not recognised. Somehow H managed to mislay her ID card.
Cutting a long story a bit shorter, I cancelled that transaction, Bayba refunded the money and I asked K (GOES agent) to receive the money and pass it onto H. That took one day, worked perfectly. H has the funds for her course and all she has to do now is to find or replace her ID card. No problem!
Now problems either for young S - the child who needed an operation on his eye a couple of years ago. GOES funded his trip to Senegal for the operation and subsequent visits for after-care. We can now report his complete cure.
J's wheelchair needed a small repair and this has been attended to.
Thanks, friends. You know who you are!
Best wishes,
Tom & Joyce.
Cutting a long story a bit shorter, I cancelled that transaction, Bayba refunded the money and I asked K (GOES agent) to receive the money and pass it onto H. That took one day, worked perfectly. H has the funds for her course and all she has to do now is to find or replace her ID card. No problem!
Now problems either for young S - the child who needed an operation on his eye a couple of years ago. GOES funded his trip to Senegal for the operation and subsequent visits for after-care. We can now report his complete cure.
J's wheelchair needed a small repair and this has been attended to.
Thanks, friends. You know who you are!
Best wishes,
Tom & Joyce.
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